WSJ article on your child's chances of getting into an IVY are slim

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not the whole article, but here is the lede:

“ Kaitlyn Younger has been an academic standout since she started studying algebra in third grade.

She took her first advanced-placement course as a freshman, scored 1550 on her SATs as a junior at McKinney High School near Dallas and will graduate this spring with an unweighted 3.95 grade-point average and as the founder of the school’s accounting club. Along the way she performed in and directed about 30 plays, sang in the school choir, scored top marks on the tests she has so far taken for 11 advanced-placement classes, helped run a summer camp and held down a part-time job.

“She is extraordinary,” said Jeff Cranmore, her guidance counselor at McKinney High School.

Ms. Younger, 18 years old, was cautiously optimistic when she applied to top U.S. colleges last fall. Responses came this month: Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Brown, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, University of California, Berkeley, and Northwestern all rejected her.

“I expected a bunch wouldn’t accept me,” she said. “I didn’t expect it to be this bad.””

It says she’s going to Arizona State.

It seems she would be an automatic admit to UT Austin. Unless with all that she's not a top ranked student in her HS, which would mean all those decisions are not that surprising.

With those stats she likely got significant merit aid at ASU

Right. I assume she's getting a free ride at ASU, which is frankly a smart choice anyhow.

January and February in Boston or Tempe? Mmmm

Or Ann Arbor?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For any kind of athletic recruiting, if the schools continue to recruit for athletics, it is impossible to get to the level of being recruitable without parents curating. A 10th grader can't decide in 10th grade that they are going to join club swimming (when they are old enough to drive themselves if their parents were never willing to) and then get a spot on a college team three years later.

Kids can and do decide to take up sports in high school all the time and some of them end up recruited at levels far beyond the Ivy League.

Unless you mean football, this does not happen ever.

DI football is 85 scholarships. Add every other mens sport together and you're about equal (assuming that the school offers every scholarship sport). Even at ivies with no scholarships, the football rosters are still enormous. There are also plenty of kids who have major growth spurts and switch to basketball in high school. Colleges don't care if an athletic 6'2 girl has been playing AAU since second grade and they will pass over plenty of 5'2 girls who have to take the 6'2 novice.

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately, as the form UPenn AO stated:

"Ms. Harberson said Ms. Younger's accomplishments on the stage at her high school and with her community theater troupe—as well as for the accounting club—were impressive but wouldn't stand out among Ivy League applicants."

Also, she shouldn't have disclosed her struggle with mental illness. My son also suffers from anxiety I have advised him not to disclose in any applications (i.e., college, work, scholarships, etc.).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For any kind of athletic recruiting, if the schools continue to recruit for athletics, it is impossible to get to the level of being recruitable without parents curating. A 10th grader can't decide in 10th grade that they are going to join club swimming (when they are old enough to drive themselves if their parents were never willing to) and then get a spot on a college team three years later.

Kids can and do decide to take up sports in high school all the time and some of them end up recruited at levels far beyond the Ivy League.

Unless you mean football, this does not happen ever.

DI football is 85 scholarships. Add every other mens sport together and you're about equal (assuming that the school offers every scholarship sport). Even at ivies with no scholarships, the football rosters are still enormous. There are also plenty of kids who have major growth spurts and switch to basketball in high school. Colleges don't care if an athletic 6'2 girl has been playing AAU since second grade and they will pass over plenty of 5'2 girls who have to take the 6'2 novice.

Sure if you conveniently ignore xc, lacrosse, soccer, swimming, and hockey

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How is this news?

right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For any kind of athletic recruiting, if the schools continue to recruit for athletics, it is impossible to get to the level of being recruitable without parents curating. A 10th grader can't decide in 10th grade that they are going to join club swimming (when they are old enough to drive themselves if their parents were never willing to) and then get a spot on a college team three years later.

Kids can and do decide to take up sports in high school all the time and some of them end up recruited at levels far beyond the Ivy League.

Unless you mean football, this does not happen ever.

Football is close to it unless you were just crazy gisted and never knew it. You could get into the pool for the first time in high school and find you set records. It does happen. Just not a lot.

Yeah and I can marry my cousin. lol.

You are much much more likely to get recuited to swim or play soccer at a NESCAC, Ivy or any other school if your parents paid for club sports your whole life (and you grew up in a rich suburb) Some high schools don't even have lacrosse or field hockey teams. How do you get recruited if your high school and town dont have teams?

But sure you can pull yourself up by the bootstraps

+1

Football and track might be the only sports where you can make it without major money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For any kind of athletic recruiting, if the schools continue to recruit for athletics, it is impossible to get to the level of being recruitable without parents curating. A 10th grader can't decide in 10th grade that they are going to join club swimming (when they are old enough to drive themselves if their parents were never willing to) and then get a spot on a college team three years later.

Kids can and do decide to take up sports in high school all the time and some of them end up recruited at levels far beyond the Ivy League.

Unless you mean football, this does not happen ever.

DI football is 85 scholarships. Add every other mens sport together and you're about equal (assuming that the school offers every scholarship sport). Even at ivies with no scholarships, the football rosters are still enormous. There are also plenty of kids who have major growth spurts and switch to basketball in high school. Colleges don't care if an athletic 6'2 girl has been playing AAU since second grade and they will pass over plenty of 5'2 girls who have to take the 6'2 novice.

Sure if you conveniently ignore xc, lacrosse, soccer, swimming, and hockey

Football is 85 scholarships, mens's xc is 12.6 (but that's combined with track), mens' lax is 12.6, men's soccer is 9.9, men's swimming is 9.9 and men's hockey is 18. That also assumes that the school actually gives out all of those scholarships. Almost every D1 school with a football program is giving out 85, lots of schools don't even have programs in all of the other sports (at UMD- a big 10 school- swimming and hockey are club sports with no scholarships or admission bumps)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For any kind of athletic recruiting, if the schools continue to recruit for athletics, it is impossible to get to the level of being recruitable without parents curating. A 10th grader can't decide in 10th grade that they are going to join club swimming (when they are old enough to drive themselves if their parents were never willing to) and then get a spot on a college team three years later.

Kids can and do decide to take up sports in high school all the time and some of them end up recruited at levels far beyond the Ivy League.

Unless you mean football, this does not happen ever.

DI football is 85 scholarships. Add every other mens sport together and you're about equal (assuming that the school offers every scholarship sport). Even at ivies with no scholarships, the football rosters are still enormous. There are also plenty of kids who have major growth spurts and switch to basketball in high school. Colleges don't care if an athletic 6'2 girl has been playing AAU since second grade and they will pass over plenty of 5'2 girls who have to take the 6'2 novice.

Sure if you conveniently ignore xc, lacrosse, soccer, swimming, and hockey

Football is 85 scholarships, mens's xc is 12.6 (but that's combined with track), mens' lax is 12.6, men's soccer is 9.9, men's swimming is 9.9 and men's hockey is 18. That also assumes that the school actually gives out all of those scholarships. Almost every D1 school with a football program is giving out 85, lots of schools don't even have programs in all of the other sports (at UMD- a big 10 school- swimming and hockey are club sports with no scholarships or admission bumps)

The number of scholarships available has nothing to do with this discussion so I don’t know why you keep bringing that up. To be recruitable for swimming, soccer or hockey you have to do expensive, exclusive club sports from childhood through high school. They require significant parental involvement. I don’t know why you keep denying that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:''McKinney High School (MHS) is located at 1400 Wilson Creek Parkway in McKinney, Texas, and is within the McKinney Independent School District. MHS is the oldest high school in McKinney and the current building opened in 1986, after moving from what is now Faubion Middle School.

Although the Texas Education Agency (TEA) rated the school as Academically Unacceptable following the 2009-10 school year, the school has shown improvement, being rated as Academically Acceptable in all following school years as of 2019.''

So she got a 1550 SAT coming from a ''weak'' high school that I am pretty sure is in a rural part of Texas. That is fairly impressive.

A couple of things ... most of McKinney is pretty wealthy. I doubt there's anything really wrong with the high school.

I see some red flags ... the anti-anxiety medication starting at age 7 and the 30 plays. That's A LOT. Figure two a year at her school and two or three a year in community theater ... that's very time consuming and I don't know how you'd have time for anything else.

I hope she is A-OK with her decision and I hope she loves college!

[Anonymous]

Three paragraphs summarily explain her rejections. Twenty years ago, she wouldn't have applied to these top-tier colleges and accumulated a hoard of rejections. Twenty years ago, she would have been happy to matriculate at UT or ASU.

1. Ms. Younger wrote in the applications about her history of depression and anxiety to explain the two B’s she earned during her sophomore year.

2. Ms. Younger’s father attended the University of Oklahoma and her mother went to Montclair State University in New Jersey. She has no connection to the faculty or alumni at any elite school, nor did she hire a test-preparation coach or a private college counselor.

3. Her school serves McKinney, Texas, a fast-growing suburb 30 miles outside of Dallas. In a given year, about half of the school’s graduates enroll at four-year colleges; most attend public universities in Texas, Dr. Cranmore said. He recalls two McKinney graduates enrolling at Yale and one at Princeton over the past decade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Three paragraphs summarily explain her rejections. Twenty years ago, she wouldn't have applied to these top-tier colleges and accumulated a hoard of rejections. Twenty years ago, she would have been happy to matriculate at UT or ASU.

1. Ms. Younger wrote in the applications about her history of depression and anxiety to explain the two B’s she earned during her sophomore year.

2. Ms. Younger’s father attended the University of Oklahoma and her mother went to Montclair State University in New Jersey. She has no connection to the faculty or alumni at any elite school, nor did she hire a test-preparation coach or a private college counselor.

3. Her school serves McKinney, Texas, a fast-growing suburb 30 miles outside of Dallas. In a given year, about half of the school’s graduates enroll at four-year colleges; most attend public universities in Texas, Dr. Cranmore said. He recalls two McKinney graduates enrolling at Yale and one at Princeton over the past decade.

Not sure what you’re really trying to say here but all what I bolded should have made her more desirable to top schools for good reason, not less.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Three paragraphs summarily explain her rejections. Twenty years ago, she wouldn't have applied to these top-tier colleges and accumulated a hoard of rejections. Twenty years ago, she would have been happy to matriculate at UT or ASU.

1. Ms. Younger wrote in the applications about her history of depression and anxiety to explain the two B’s she earned during her sophomore year.

2. Ms. Younger’s father attended the University of Oklahoma and her mother went to Montclair State University in New Jersey. She has no connection to the faculty or alumni at any elite school, nor did she hire a test-preparation coach or a private college counselor.

3. Her school serves McKinney, Texas, a fast-growing suburb 30 miles outside of Dallas. In a given year, about half of the school’s graduates enroll at four-year colleges; most attend public universities in Texas, Dr. Cranmore said. He recalls two McKinney graduates enrolling at Yale and one at Princeton over the past decade.

There was a span of several decades where she would have omitted point 1 and chosen which school to attend from multiple offers. Before that, you're right, but that resume would have gotten her in to those schools even a decade ago

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Three paragraphs summarily explain her rejections. Twenty years ago, she wouldn't have applied to these top-tier colleges and accumulated a hoard of rejections. Twenty years ago, she would have been happy to matriculate at UT or ASU.

1. Ms. Younger wrote in the applications about her history of depression and anxiety to explain the two B’s she earned during her sophomore year.

2. Ms. Younger’s father attended the University of Oklahoma and her mother went to Montclair State University in New Jersey. She has no connection to the faculty or alumni at any elite school, nor did she hire a test-preparation coach or a private college counselor.

3. Her school serves McKinney, Texas, a fast-growing suburb 30 miles outside of Dallas. In a given year, about half of the school’s graduates enroll at four-year colleges; most attend public universities in Texas, Dr. Cranmore said. He recalls two McKinney graduates enrolling at Yale and one at Princeton over the past decade.

So she should have known her place. Got it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Three paragraphs summarily explain her rejections. Twenty years ago, she wouldn't have applied to these top-tier colleges and accumulated a hoard of rejections. Twenty years ago, she would have been happy to matriculate at UT or ASU.

1. Ms. Younger wrote in the applications about her history of depression and anxiety to explain the two B’s she earned during her sophomore year.

2. Ms. Younger’s father attended the University of Oklahoma and her mother went to Montclair State University in New Jersey. She has no connection to the faculty or alumni at any elite school, nor did she hire a test-preparation coach or a private college counselor.

3. Her school serves McKinney, Texas, a fast-growing suburb 30 miles outside of Dallas. In a given year, about half of the school’s graduates enroll at four-year colleges; most attend public universities in Texas, Dr. Cranmore said. He recalls two McKinney graduates enrolling at Yale and one at Princeton over the past decade.

So she should have known her place. Got it.

More medication and harder work and less sleep. The lesson is that you can't afford two Bs

[Anonymous]

Gotta feel a bit bad for Arizona. They give this girl an academic scholarship and she's still mad enough to go public with the unfairness of her not getting into an Ivy.

Meanwhile, WSJ uses her for their white grievance narrative.

Girl, this article was a mistake. When you apply for Wharton or HBS, they are going to Google this article.